I See a Darkness
by Gale
Summary: After the events of Spykecam, Sabretooth went from freelance to working with Magneto. What did he wind up leaving behind, however? And what happens when it catches up with him? Rating for harsh language. Draft. New Ch added!
1. Chapter 1

_I See a Darkness_

**-An X-men: Evolution Fanfic-**

_By Gale (Magdaleina on DA)_

**Author's Note:** If you like this, I beg you not to read my other Evo fics, because I was much younger and a much worse writer back then. This is for the 'I Never' Contest from the Evo-Obsessed Club on DA. I decided Sabretooth needed some lovin, because nobody'd really used him much in the contests yet. This story includes another Marvel character, Birdy, who was one of my favorites in the comics and worked off of ol' Vic really well till she went and got herself stabbed by his son. The title is taken from the Johnny Cash song, _I See A Darkness_, which I just thought was right fitting for the two of them. Used without permission -- but I'm a poor college kid, so no suing, mkay? **Also Note**: Because it's Sabretooth-centered, there's obviously going to be some language and violence in here. You know the drill. Don't read it to your five year-old.

Enjoy.

---

_I never shoulda got outta bed this mornin._

Rarely was there ever a situation that Victor Creed found himself unprepared. Sure, these instances tended to lump into the time between now and when he first started working for Magneto. But now? Now things were different. He was on his own, working freelance, which suited the feral just fine. After that whole deal with Apocalypse and Magneto being blown up then turning up again, he really didn't care much for maintaining his position with the Acolytes anymore. For one, he'd gotten right tired of that faggot Gambit butting in on things that didn't concern anybody but him and the runt. For another, Magneto was just fucked up now, and there were no two ways about it. It was all that quality time with those two stupid kids of his. Had to be.

At one point in time, Victor supposed he bought into Magneto's idea of a war between mutants and humans. He'd fought the runt for a place in Avalon, but largely because he was still on Magneto's payroll and it was expected of him. Not that he complained at all -- a chance to pound Wolverine into chunks of bone and blood was always worth the extra effort. But Victor hung around and allowed Magneto to pay him, meagerly, knowing that he'd be seeing some action.

In the months before he left, however, there simply was not any action, of i any /i kind, to be found. And that was bullshit. He had a pretty sweet setup going on before then. Took the jobs as he liked them, had plenty of time to harrass the runt. Things were going perfectly, in fact, until Wolverine's pet cripple brainraped him and dropped him in the North Pole.

So now that he was free from the giant refrigerator Magneto liked to call a "base", Victor was back to doing what he liked best: Bashing things for fun and profit. He'd been away from it almost two years, and now was more and glad to be back in the saddle.

...Well, that's how he felt until now, while on a night "run" as he called it, he came face to exrutiatingly painful face with a spark net. Whoever it was that'd been following him knew how to do it. He didn't even realize someone was on him until just before the trap was sprung.

Bands of metal wrapped around his heavy torso, his limbs, cutting into the bare sections of his flesh before buzzing to sudden life with electricity. Blue light rose up in the dark as he roared, held prone by the blast, the smell of burning hair and flesh filling his nostrils. He had no awareness of the time that passed before the power died and he collapsed, the net still covering him and twisting his arms behind him as he lay on his stomach, face full of dirt, smoke faintly rising up off his body. Body still humming with the recent shock, he didn't move much, waiting for his healing factor to hurry the hell up and kick in, but he was fully aware that whoever the fuck had attacked him was coming up on him at a bored saunter. Their steps were purposeful, like now they wanted him to hear them.

He growled low but listened.

Whoever it was, they were light, likely female, with a kind of callous cool in their step that he thought he recognized, but his brain was just as cooked as everything else. He opened his eyes to watch a pair of booted heels stroll within his line of vision. Damn broad merc types. Always out for some prom queen vengeance for killing their daddy or never getting a pony or some shit. He didn't care; as soon as he could move he was going to make her eat that --

A hard kick to his face stopped that train of thought fairly quick, and his head rolled with the impact; he was too heavy to turn over completely, but now he at least had a chance to look at her face. He noted then that the smell of himself burning intermingled with the scent of tobacco as well, shown as a cigarette butt dropped to the ground just next to them to be stamped out. His gaze followed the foot upward, over smoothely curved leather-clad legs, a nice and familiar rack, and then a pair of pursed, cocky lips beneath a set of night vision goggles.

The woman reached up, with a gloved hand pulling them off and dropping a mass of soft blonde hair onto her shoulders that looked blue in the meager moonlight. If she hadn't looked so obviously pissed off, he imagined she might have been smirking at the little feat she'd just performed. Wasn't everyday someone got the drop on the Sabretooth.

"Hey boss," she said.

It almost felt wrong not to reply. "Hey Birdy," he said. Though pained he still managed a toothy grin. "How's tricks?" He might have managed something a little more biting if another kick, this time reserved for his gut, hadn't driven the wind from his lungs. Short of that he could feel his body closing up the welts in his flesh, pushing the dead skin off of his body. Feeling was returning to his fingers. She could keep doing that, but all she was doing now was pissing him off and slugging her didn't sound all that bad at the moment.

"You'd be back in a day, huh?" she demanded.

_...Th'fuck is she talking about?_

Birdy brought her other hand up, holding an odd little blinking remote there. His eye followed her movement closely, like a caged lion waiting for the exact moment the keepers would unlock the cage. Her thumb brushed over a shining blue button, and what followed instead of freedom was another sudden blasting shock. When it stopped, Victor tasted copper, realizing in a daze that he'd bitten down on his own tongue.

"I'm talkin' about the job, you stupid sack of shit," the blonde answered, and for a moment he wondered if he'd asked anything out loud before he remembered she could hear inside his head. Always could without trying. "Y'weren't there, and I had ta go on with-" another kick, and he grunted, "- _out_ you!"

Inhaling hard, through his nostrils, he tried thinking. Yeah, that government facility. Fat take on that, too, but he'd decided to stop off in Bayville and have a good tussle with the runt to get himself fired up. And then he woke up in snow. "You hit me again and I'm gonna tear your goddamn head off," he ground out between spits of his own blood.

"Spent a year gettin' prodded by S.H.I.E.L.D. thanks to your sorry ass! I ought to tear _yours_ off!"

Victor managed a tired guffaw at that, rechecking that tiny frame of hers to confirm what she was suggesting was in so many ways utterly impossible. There were few things in the world that mattered that were smaller than Birdy, in his opinion. "Baby, you're welcome to try." Her finger moved over that button again and his eyes widened. "Don't you d--!"

Too late.

He at least had time enough to remind himself to feel pissed off when it was all over. Therefore, the minute the current was cut off again, he came back to consciousness, throat aching like the rest of him and roars coming out rough like he were shouting through crushed glass. All the while though he cursed her, her parents, the sperm and egg that made her, even her dog, letting the force of his anger be what fueled the still slow work of his healing factor. "--fuckin kill you, you stupid bitch!"

He uttered an alarmed "neh --" before Birdy pressed the button, for barely a second this time, just enough to make him jump.

"Then get up and do it, boss," she chided. The feral's voicebox had been on a constant rumble for the last few minutes now, and he glared death at her. It wasn't at all a smart thing, goading him like that. Making fun of him. Girl musta gone crazy in the last couple years because she never woulda done that within scratching distance of him. He twisted his wrists, feeling the metal tendrils of the net giving with the force, but not enough to fully release him.

"Soon's I get loose, you're gonna be real sorry about all this, Birdy," he muttered low.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh don't make no promises yet, boss. I can do this all night."

And she would, too. The bitch. In any case, while two seconds ago Victor might have thought ripping her throat out would be the best conclusion to what was turning out to be one shitty evening, he started to realize that a living Birdy still had something he wanted which he couldn't get from a dead one. He heard her "hmph" and knew she'd picked up on that thought.

Of course that didn't mean he wasn't going to get her back but good. Right now his tactics just had to switch. He relaxed his body, still growling some under his breath, but at the least he appeared a little less angry. Realizing it'd been at least a full minute since she pushed the button again, a slow, fanged smile slid across his face. She was wearing her own rage down to nothing, and he had no worries for his own life being snuffed out by that little toy she was playing with. He doubted she could go all night; he could be patient, wait for her to get bored and let him loose, like he knew she would. That's how things used to work on those rare occassions where for some reason she'd have the upper hand. He'd only say it was true to himself, but he'd missed having her about; she took care of things so he wouldn't have to, actually sorta liked him when she wasn't in one of her bitchy "let's set Victor on fire because he left me to blah blah blah" moods, and on top of that was a warm body. No way in hell she'd try to kill him. She flat out didn't work right without him around. Hell -- her being picked up by S.H.I.E.L.D. was proof enough of that (and though he'd never admit it, he felt some tinge of remourse for letting it happen, but his hands had been tied -- literally).

He let that train of thought run a few stops too far, however, and he'd completely forgotten she could hear him until another grunt snapped him back to reality, sensation returning to his body almost in full force now, and he blinked as she turned and walked away from him. "Deh -- yer not just gonna leave me here!"

"Aren't I, Victor?" she asked, glancing back. She tossed the remote over her shoulder, and the cylindrical object collided with the dusty ground with a bounce before rolling to a complete stop a few feet away from him.

Thankfully it hadn't landed button first, but he couldn't be bothered with it right now. He squirmed a little against his restraints, which were still making slow work letting him back up. It'd still take another minute. "Naw, you ain't gonna do ol' Victor like that, are ya darlin?" he tried to make that sound a bit more confident. It wasn't a matter of him needing her to let him out; it was more that he just wanted her not to walk off while he was talking at her.

She'd almost disappeared at that point, but he could still hear and smell her.

"Birdy!" A sound rose up in his throat, and he tried choking it down but out it came just the same. Birdy'd always called it his 'lonely cat noise', so he hated making it. He pushed harder on the net. Bands of it were popping off behind him, making unhappy twangs each time one snapped, and he almost had his elbows out. "Damnit, Birdy!" And she was still walking, still going at that self-important little pace she always used -- which just said to him that she was waiting for him to do as she'd said earlier, to get up by himself and come, and that just pissed him off even more. He wasn't _nobody's_ lapdog.

In half the time he'd surmised, he had his arms free, and with the help of his claws had no trouble rolling over and getting the bands off his legs. Then he pulled himself in the direction she'd gone in, first building momentum on all fours before rising onto his feet at full speed, still slightly crouched as he gained. And she could hear him coming; he knew that as soon as his ears caught her breaking into a run. Once he had her in his sights again, he pounced. They fell into a roll, him taking the first impact with the ground then easily pinning her down. Victor felt himself laughing for the first time today when he sat up to look at her, glowering at him like he'd just insulted her mother or something, like she hadn't expected it to end this way.

He pushed forward, covering with his mouth a pair of lips that were likely prepared to unleash all manner of curses on his person. She uttered some small noise of objection, thrashing under him for a moment like it was going to get him to let her up. Her teeth closed on his bottom lip, and he growled but remembered not to bite back. He did shit like that and usually woke up several days later, unable to remember how to take a leak and with the worst headache of his life, to boot. That she wasn't hitting him with all she had, now, in terms of her powers, just meant that she wasn't going to fight back for much longer anyway, and sure enough, she stopped bearing down with her teeth and shoved one of her little hands up into the tangled mess of his long hair, getting a good grip like she liked to and holding him there like he wasn't gonna be able to stop it -- not that he planned on quitting for a minute anyway. It was only cute when she thought she had some control of the situation when she didn't actually have any, after all.

In two years he'd forgotten what she tasted like, how her body felt trapped between him and the floor, even the sounds she made. And for that, he'd have to pay the runt back someday. Him and the good professor, but there wasn't much time to think on that now.

He released her, finally, smirking down at her between breaths of air. Sure, she still looked pissed, but the storm had passed at least. "You'll get over it," he mused, earning him a fresh glare. "Meantime, you got any smokes?"

"You are such an asshole."

END


	2. Chapter 2

X-men: Evolution

I See a Darkness

-Written by Gale-

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters nor do I profit from them. I enjoyed writing the original "I See a Darkness" as a oneshot but decided I'd like to continue on and see where it goes. Here's what came of it.

Chapter #2:

Birdy's current 'abode' was a fucking dump, and there were no two ways about it. Not that Victor Creed was the sort of person that had to have mints left on his pillow every morning or anything, but it certainly wasn't like her to hole up in cheap motel rooms. For someone on the run as often as they were, she had pretty particular tastes, and when she didn't have her way, she bitched the entire time about the floorboards being loose, swearing she could hear roaches in the walls (and if he couldn't, she sure as hell fucking couldn't), or claiming over and over again that with a hammer she could fix the molding along the wall no problem. It got to be that Sabretooth had started to tack a little more onto the price tag of every job just for decent hotel rooms, so he'd know she wouldn't start nesting on him.

This place looked like the roof was about to cave in. He could smell outside air seeping in from somewhere, and a quick inhale or two of his nostrils told him that under Birdy's familiar scent -- one that he'd say, give or take, had about two weeks to settle in -- this place had about twenty years' worth of fucking, drugs, piss, vomit, and death that needed washing out.

But not all of Birdy's old habits had gone out of her. In the time she'd been based here -- and from the looks of it, waiting for him to pop up -- she'd done what she could. Under all the equipment she had strung about (the bed was practically invisible under all the harnesses, guns and magazines strewn about on it, laid meticulously and in an order only she could know) there was the odd patch in the wall thrown together with cardboard and staples, sanding jobs begun, things coming loose that had been jerry-rigged back together. The bed itself had at some point been missing a leg, and one had been constructed using wood she'd dragged in from outside and bits of metal and things she'd probably found in the garbage. It was very much her space. The fact that she had been expecting him was only made obvious by one thing: the only piece of furniture that didn't have her crap scattered all over it was the couch.

At least he knew where _he _was sleeping.

"Put me _down, _furball."

Creed twitched involuntarily. Birdy, who had ridden to the hotel room slung over his shoulder, was starting to drum her fingernails on his back. What might have been taken as a gesture of impatience if she were in a less awkward position could only be seen as a personal signal she was sending to him. He chuckled and patted her a little roughly; she could handle the teasing. Besides, if she had been away long enough to stop calling him 'Boss' then she needed a little reconditioning anyway. "Thought you fell asleep back there."

"The Hell you did. Now my feet need to be on the ground in the next five seconds or I'm going to climb in your head and start pulling plugs."

He dropped her with more force than was really necessary. The tiny blonde grunted audibly as she came down on her own backside, wincing. She opened an eye to half-glower up at him, rubbing her back. "That's better."

Cheeky bitch, but he'd shown her.

Birdy groped behind her for the edge of the bed and started to push herself to her feet. Creed flattened one of his hands on her shoulder and nudged her back down with a _thud._ She glowered up at him and pointedly reached to stand herself up again, and with a single gesture he undid her progress once more. A low, frustrated noise issued up her throat, which made him smile. She wasn't much of a growler -- didn't have the equipment for it -- but it was funny when she did it.

Having reasserted himself, however, the feral let up and sat on the couch. He wasn't a "bed" person, typically because it was rare that he slept a full night through as opposed to just nap continually. Couches were good for that. You could be up and about with a simple roll and nobody turned on the TV while you were sleeping. But this one… Creed shifted and bounced a moment to test the springs, or lack thereof. The cushion was all sunken and warped, and the frame dug unhappily into the bottoms of his legs.

Birdy got up and started packing away the things that were left on the bed, her silent way of showing she didn't care for the disrepair his chosen resting place happened to be in.

Determined for the moment not to show his discomfort, he turned and lay back, slinging his legs down the length of the couch. The end caught them most of the way up the shins, not quite short enough to catch his knees and not long enough to find any halfway decent way to lie on his back. That frame cut into his side, too. He grumbled, testing the back of the couch -- one leg rested there comfortably but the other not so much -- it either had to stay on the arm or go to the floor, which fucked up any semblance of balance he had before. He knew that if he somehow found some crazy way to doze off like this he'd just fall off at some point, and if he was going to do that he might as well have curled up on the floor to begin with.

This was a shitty couch.

Victor grumped at the back of Birdy's head, as this was clearly her fault. Presently she had completed clearing the bed and had begun to remove the gear she was wearing. Her goldenrod hair dropped down from the tail she had it tied into, and she shrugged out of her holsters. Off came more straps, guns, ammunition packs, knives, and all other sorts of gadgets. More than she usually carried with her on a regular job. Soon enough layers of clothing began to follow. No hesitation. If she had wanted privacy she'd have gone into the bathroom, but as it is, giving her back to him seemed all the space she ever needed on an outing. Of course she'd undressed in his presence plenty of times, but there was no fun in how she worked, now. There was no deliberate slowness, not even a twitch to show she was expecting him to watch. The feral harrumphed and shifted again. She picked a bad room on purpose, and now she was ignoring him.

She climbed into bed and only then turned to look at him. There was no invitation, nothing in her body language that suggested he was welcome. "You look uncomfortable," she noted, hand groping for the bedside table, to grab what he saw was a nearly empty pack of smokes. She shook it, removed the last, giving him a pointed glance as she stuck it in her mouth and found a lighter to ignite it.

Creed glowered. "You're still just sore that I caught up to you so quick."

"Who's sore?" Birdy said between her teeth. "I found you, didn't I?" She took a long drag, removed the cigarette from her mouth and blew a smooth billow of smoke out. It carried the scent of charred tobacco, her lipstick, and some of her deeper, better hidden odors all the way across the room to him. It made him remember things that came back just like every other taste and scent that he'd encountered that night -- things he hadn't thought about since before he joined up with Magneto. Like that they wound up fucking for the first time, fighting over his last smoke.

"You gonna blow that shit in my face all night?"

"I don't think I could make it last that long. 'S just one, after all."

"Don't be a smartass." She was hunkering down now, propping and kneading at the pillows before lying back completely, blowing puffs and rings up at the ceiling now. Her eyelids were heavy, and despite the extra work she was giving her lungs, the rise and fall of her chest was beginning to slow. "You're gonna doze off and set yourself on fire."

Birdy stretched languidly, and the ember glow at the end of her cigarette flew in a graceful curve out away from her face as her hand holding it and the soft line of her arm unfurled at an angle across the mattress. A tap of her finger shook some ashes off onto the bedside table. "Hasn't happened yet." She brought the smoke back to her mouth, another puff. By now her eyes were completely closed and showed no signs, no minimal twitches to show she'd reopen them. "Besides," she added, "you wake up when things are in the microwave 10 seconds too long. I think I've got a pretty good smoke detector."

"I'd just let ya burn, y'know."

"I know."

She was practically asleep by the time she murmured this, and Victor Creed was already up and approaching her, eyes rolling heavily in his skull. He caught the cigarette between two claws and plucked it out of her hand. As an afterthought, he took a drag and winced. Cheap, girly garbage. And he hated that menthol taste. There were other, better subtleties but none particularly strong enough to make a difference. Nasty. He mashed it into the bedside table.

Birdy opened an eye briefly to look at him, then began to stretch, inhaling long and sharply. "What are you up to, Mister?" she asked him, voice stretching just like her shapely limbs and the gentle arch of her spine. The cigarette had already been forgotten; perhaps she'd forgotten being angry, too.

To test this, Creed leapt on; she nearly jumped out of her skin, and one hand was on him, pushing his shoulder, muttering in warning "VictorVictor_Victor…_"

There was a crack, and the bed lurched down to one side. He crouched atop her, claws digging into the sheets and mattress for support as he tried to reclaim his balance.

That goddamn leg had given out.

And Birdy was laughing. "I tried to tell you. Thing wasn't holding together too good."

He frowned at her. "And you did a bang-up job of fixin' it, didn't you?"

"If you wanna take a whack at it, bright eyes, then be my guest."

"Maybe I will." The feral climbed off the bed, reached underneath and grabbed at the leg at the head of the bed. There was a horrible metallic wrenching sound as he snapped it off. Birdy squeaked. The left side of the bed now hung downward. He went to the other side, crouched, and grabbed the two remaining legs, same story. The bed thumped to the floor, and its occupant was back to giggling. It wasn't the same laugh as before. She wasn't having a joke at his expense; he could smell it. She was excited.

Victor pounced again, a low rumble issuing in his throat. Birdy seemed to curl under him; he felt a thigh brush up along his side, but for a moment she didn't reach to touch him with her hands, a perfectly submissive gesture on her part. But once he settled she did chance one; her palm lay gingerly against his cheek; she was compliant, but not afraid, and he might have taken advantage of that.

Instead he caught her wrist, not hard, but enough to get her paying attention.

She'd either been skimping or she'd lost her goddamn mind; she used to have much better standards. This entire hotel room had been an enormous random act of penny pinching, on her part. Shitty room, shitty couch, shitty smokes -- she had access to the money back when they were together, so what was the deal?

"Why'd you come lookin' for me, Birdy?"

Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Why -- what do you mean, 'why'?"

"I mean _why, _Birdy. There was at least twenty g's packed away that I know _I _never touched after I went off. You could have gone away without another thought; you knew where it was. And now you're sleepin in this shithole for what? This tearful, heartfelt reunion? C'mon. You lost it all, didn't you?"

Birdy seemed to flatten under him, all the good humor gone out of her stance, even her smell. "Jesus Christ, Victor; if I just wanted a fuckin' meal ticket, I'd still be in Massachusetts molling for Shaw."

"And S.H.I.E.L.D. just let you walk."

"Once they had all they thought they could get out of me, yeah. Most of the money went into getting out here from the last job they gave me and replacing my equipment." She sat up and he inched back, watching her with skepticism. Sure, there was a lot of shit here, but she knew where to go and take her picks in the market. No way in Hell this set her back twenty grand, unless --

"You mean you shot most of my wad replacing that goddamn Thompson again."

"Call it compensation, boss," she returned flippantly. "While you've been fuckin' around out here doing whatever, I've had agents and scientists up my ass."

"Yeah well I'm sure they all had room fer--"

Her fist connected with his face faster than even he would have anticipated. His head barely moved an inch, and even before the adrenaline started piling up at the back of his skull there was part of him that knew she probably hurt her hand more than she hurt him in doing it, but that didn't matter. There was half a second between surprised and pissed, and Birdy was pinned with her back to the wall and his hand around her throat. When he had the presence of mind to speak and breathe again, it was through his fangs; his jaw tense, bottom row of teeth grinding hard against the top, air hissing past as though he were taking that familiar stink of fear in through his nostrils and pushing the good breaths out of him to make more room for it.

"Are you out of your fuckin _mind?_" he ground out.

Birdy tried to cough around his hand. She didn't even pry at him, just waited. It made him want to squeeze harder, but the anger slowly began to recede, and he released her with a shove. Gasping, she clasped a hand around her neck where his had been. Anger began to diminish. Somewhere in that head of hers, Birdy might have believed she had good reason for socking at him, even if it was fucking crazy.

"So what is it, Birdy?" he demanded. "What are you here for? You're sayin it's not money. You think I'll drop what I'm doin and make things like they were when we ran together?"

She didn't answer. The fact that she didn't said there was some smartass comment on her tongue that she was keeping behind her teeth.

"Well?"

Swallowing, the blonde leaned toward him; he let her. There was no hint of threat on the air anymore. She wasn't braced to attack; she was trying to find her nook again. In a few short moments, she slid into his lap, hooking her arms under his, forehead touching his chest. He felt her breathe in and kept his hands still, waiting, wondering.

"I want to stay with you," she murmured. "Don't care where you're going or what you're doing. If I can come with you, then I want to. Okay?"

"You think I need someone like you tagging along after me?" he asked, leaning down to whisper in her ear. There wasn't much fight in what he said; just plain speaking. "You half cooked me to death, you argue, you don't do what you're told. You're more trouble than you're worth."

One of her hands tightened over his back, fingers twisting into the cloth of his jacket. Her body seemed to grow heavier with tension, but she stilled.

"Then stay with me until morning?"

Victor sighed. "Till morning, Birdy."

She slept soon enough, and he dozed, always half conscious of her body, the sound of her breathing, surrounded by her scent, memories. She woke once and pulled him to her, half-consciousness wrapping her in the same acute awareness of him that he had of her. He didn't stop her; he didn't think.

He just acted.

It was just like it had been before, and he had not remembered. She never tried to do it her way; it would have been suicide to try, but she was the only one that could ever go with him into the frenzy that followed and come out without having lost even a drop of blood.

The next morning, in his napping he was aware of Birdy moving around, dressing, and when he finally opened his eyes she was fully clothed, had apparently found another pack of cigarettes (she was smoking again), and most her equipment had been packed away.

The mattress around him was in shreds.

Victor rolled off the mattress and to his feet, left his clothes rumpled, unbothered by what shifted in the night.

"Where you gonna go?"

She didn't look at him, just continued packing, talking as she held the cigarette between her teeth. "Probably Manhattan. You think Fitzroy'll set me up with something if I drop your name? We did that job for him a couple years back, after all."

"You could do that. But y'know he's not gonna put up with you long if he finds out there've been Feds workin you over."

"S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't the FBI."

"Might as well be."

"I'll take my chances. Look me up if you're in town."

"Might do," he said noncommittally.

Somehow all that shit compacted into two duffel bags. Birdy hefted one over her shoulder and struggled with it out of the door. Victor harrumphed and picked up the other, following. She still had that shitty old pickup. Sure, when they lit out together they drove in style, but she still kept that damn thing.

The feral threw the bag into the back with the other one and climbed into the passenger's seat just as Birdy was sitting in the driver's. She gave him a blank look.

"Make a left and drive till you see the sign for the ski resort," he said shortly.

"I didn't offer you a ride."

"And I didn't ask you nicely to go, either. Just drive."

Glowering, Birdy kicked the old clunker into gear, and they were off, following the way to the resort -- which by this time of year was close down on account of it being too warm for snow. He directed her toward the dirt road leading off away from it with little more than pointing a single finger. She got the idea, and the further they went the less she needed physically or verbally from him to find her way.

The white pickup came to a grinding halt outside an immense metal dome. Victor kicked the door open and slid out, reaching in the back to grab the bag he'd carried out for her, and heading for where he knew the entrance to be hidden. Birdy climbed out and stared after him questioningly, and he glanced back. Sometimes, she couldn't read him. If he didn't make all his decisions until the last second she could never know, could she?

"You comin or what?"

TO BE CONTINUED


End file.
